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Wils, Jan
(b Alkmaar, 22 Feb 1891; d 1972). Dutch architect. He studied architecture at the Technische Hogeschool, Delft, and worked as a draughtsman for H. P. Berlage in The Hague from 1914 to 1916 when he opened his own office in Voorburg. Shortly afterwards, he met Vilmos Huszár and Theo van Doesburg, co-founders of the radical periodical DE STIJL, which gave its name to a distinctive movement from the 1920s. One of the goals of De Stijl was the working collaboration of painters and architects, and Wils consistently put this ideal into practice; for example, van Doesburg acted as colour consultant for his De Lange house (1917), Alkmaar, and his Hotel De Dubbele Sleutel (1918; destr. c. 1975, see Ex and Hoek, 1986, p. 191), Woerden. He also became a newspaper critic and writer at this time, writing both for De Stijl and for Wendingen, the publication of the expressionist Amsterdam School, and was a prominent member of the Hague Art Circle. Wils’s best works were realized after his resignation from De Stijl in 1919; his town houses (1919) in Alkmaar, on which Huszár acted as colour consultant, were his first buildings to incorporate flat roofs and were designed in accordance with De Stijl principles. He became known as ‘Frank Lloyd Wils’ because of his admiration for the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, although Wils’s designs were too original to be judged as derivative. For example, he used an unconventional housing type and construction methods for his housing development Daal en Berg (1920), Papaverhof, The Hague, although the plan echoed work by Wright. Wils was unable to build much in the early 1920s because of financial difficulties, but he developed several designs of horizontal, flat-roofed buildings of brick and concrete, with small but strongly defined vertical elements, large, steel-framed windows and very detailed ornament. His later works of 1925–35 showed the influence of Functionalism, for example the Olympic Stadium (1928), Amsterdam, which had a heavily walled appearance, the Citroen building (1929) and the Cinema City theatre (1935), both in Amsterdam; the latter used a steel frame and was hailed as a prime example of functionalist building. Wils continued to design after World War II; works included the Hotel Bouwes (1952–61), Zandvoort, and the Chamber of Commerce (1956–9), The Hague.
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